


Medulla Oblongata

by kissoffools



Category: Fight Club (1999)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-06-21
Packaged: 2018-02-05 13:28:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1820113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissoffools/pseuds/kissoffools
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I don’t know where we’re going or what our endgame is. I don’t know if we—this—has a point. If I have a purpose. </p><p>I also don’t know if that even matters anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Medulla Oblongata

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gaialux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/gifts).



> Set roughly two months after _Fight Club_. This story is based on movie canon.

I hate people.

I can understand why humans need each other around, I guess. The desire to hold someone close or drown them in every bullshit, mundane thought that crosses your mind can be like a drug. Some people need that sort of shit. If no one acknowledges your existence, how do you know you exist at all?

But I don’t need that. I don’t need them. Never have.

Which I guess makes my relationship with Tyler a little… unorthodox.

Well, no. The fact that Tyler _isn’t actually a real person_ makes our relationship a little unorthodox. The fact that he—I— _we_ collected a following, started a revolution, and blew up a large portion of our city makes our relationship a little strange.

But the fact that now, after everything… the fact that I still need him? That pretty much makes things as messed up as you can possibly get. 

It’s been two months since Project Mayhem, and he’s still with me. 

I’m fucked up.

But the thing is, it doesn’t feel that way. We function just like any other twosome. We travel, we settle, we see the sights of the world. We may be doing most of our travelling in the dead of night, and we may not use our real names when we book a new place to stay. But that’s all Tyler. He knows how to be smart about these things—knows when to lay low and when to move on. The cops have never caught on to us, and it’s his ass that’s keeping mine out of jail. I’d be nowhere, at the end of the day, without Tyler Durden. 

I’d be no one.

Marla thought I was no one.

She tried to hide it. I came home with her, slept in her bed and groped her tits every night when she was drifting off to sleep. She liked that—said it reminded her of “the old me”, or some crap like that. She didn’t like me when I wasn’t Tyler. If I couldn’t fuck her like he did, if I didn’t buy her cigarettes and make her feel like a goddess, she didn’t want any part of me. 

“What the fuck’s happened to you?” she’d ask me, banging around the kitchen at dinnertime. “You used to fuck me up against the door the second you came home. Tore my clothes like a goddamn animal. And now, what? Nothing?” 

I’d shrug, make some noncommittal noise, and when she’d turn and point the spatula at my chest, I’d know I was in trouble.

“Do you think I’m fat?”

“Jesus Christ, Marla.”

“Did you go gay?”

“You’re fucking insane.”

And that’s when she’d throw down the dishtowel over her shoulder and bang her way back to the bedroom. “Pussy,” she’d huff right before the door slammed.

Marla missed Tyler, and I got that. Tyler was electric. Tyler was big and brilliant and real in every way I wasn’t. He was alive, and people believed in him. People wanted to be him.

I still wanted to be him.

And when I let him out again, I didn’t give him back to Marla. If he was coming back, I was keeping him all to myself.

“You’re making a terrible decision, you know,” Tyler said to me that first night, stretching as he looked out Marla’s bedroom curtains. “Just awful.”

“Shut up and help me pack.” I didn’t know where we were going, but we couldn’t stay. We couldn’t keep things the way they’d been before the fighting. Before the explosions.

Tyler flashed me a smile. “Someone grew a spine.”

“Had to learn something from you eventually.”

We left at eight, as the sun set behind the tall apartment buildings across the street. We didn’t see Marla before we went.

And now we’re two months out and crashing in a shitty motel outside of Austin. No police in sight, but we keep the television on just in case. Breaking news is our bitch. The motel room is stuffy, and even with a window cracked, it smells like mothballs. There’s longhorns on the wall and fringe on the dust ruffle—the fucking _dust ruffle_ , Jesus Christ—and the owners seemed like real peaches when we checked in.

I don’t like peaches.

“You know, you’re too negative.” Tyler’s leaning against the headboard, smoking a cigarette. He makes smoke rings with his lips every time he exhales, and my eyes are drawn to him. My eyes are always, somehow, drawn to him. 

“Me?”

“You obsess,” he observes, leaning over to put out his cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. The scars on the back of my hand sear. “You get so caught up in the useless little details that you can’t see the big fucking picture. You’re sitting here watching TV and acting like everything’s hunky dory, but you’re picking apart this whole room in your head and it’s depressing as shit.”

“I don’t—”

“Yeah, you do.” Tyler says with a nod. “I know you, man. You haven’t changed a bit.”

I sigh, leaning back in my chair. What I wouldn’t give for a beer or a whiskey or a fucking appletini to take the edge off. He knows how to set my nerves on fire. “You really think I haven’t learned better by now? I spent months living in your shitty house. I hit you. I co-created Project Mayhem. You still think I don’t know how to let shit go?”

“If you knew how to let shit go,” he says, “I wouldn’t be here.”

It pisses me off, how well he can read my mind.

But it has its advantages. Nobody’s ever gotten inside me like Tyler has. He gets under my skin, crawls in there and moves me, anticipating my every action and countering with one of his own before I can think about my next step ahead. It’s like a well-rehearsed dance, now, but with the sizzle of spontaneity that echoes from empty parking lots and dank bar basements. His lips are on mine to catch my gasp when he grinds his hips against mine, my hands already lifting to be pinned over my head in his strong grip. He isn’t gentle and tender and I’m not a trembling flower—it’s dizzying and frantic and powerful, fueled by pent-up aggression and emotion and undercurrents of god knows what else. When he rolls away and collapses next to me on the damp sheets, he’s wearing a smirk and I’m panting heavily.

“Another one for your masturbatory fantasies,” he says, and I feel his thigh against mine as he stretches over me to grab another cigarette from the bedside table. “Always happy to help.”

I don’t know where we’re going or what our endgame is. I don’t know if we—this—has a point. If I have a purpose. 

I also don’t know if that even matters anymore.

“I can’t believe I ever decided to become friends with you. Dick.”

“Oh, it wasn’t a choice, my friend,” Tyler says. He twists a little to hold his cigarette out to my lips, keeping it steady while I take a drag. He knows my every move before I do. “We were never a choice.”

It’s moments like this that remind me that yes, I hate people. It’s moments like this that remind me that no, I don’t need people.

And it’s moments that remind me that, at the end of the day, I just need Tyler.

 

_end._

**Author's Note:**

> Gaialux, I hope you enjoy! I loved what you said about wanting to hear more about the Narrator's view on life, and your prompt about him being unable to give up the Tyler persona in the future. So I ran with it. I hope it's at least a little bit what you had in mind!


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